Natural gas experts cast doubt on outage explanation

Alex Kuffner Journal Staff Writer kuffneralex

Wednesday

Jan 23, 2019 at 8:08 PMJan 23, 2019 at 9:40 PM

PROVIDENCE — Natural gas experts are casting doubt on an explanation provided by the owner of a major gas transmission pipeline that higher-than-normal demand caused the outage on Aquidneck Island that has left thousands of people without heat.

In its only public statement so far on the crisis that started Monday morning, Canadian firm Enbridge, which operates the Algonquin Gas Transmission line, said Tuesday afternoon that the cold snap led to a spike in demand for gas for heating and resulted in the widespread disruption to service.

But National Grid, the utility that provides gas to homes and businesses in Rhode Island, blamed the situation on a faulty valve on the Algonquin line in Massachusetts that caused a drop in pressure that was felt most acutely in Newport and Middletown, the communities located at one of the endpoints of the regional gas distribution network. Out of concerns for safety, National Grid shut down portions of the island’s system, and is in the midst of a painstaking process to bring it back on line.

A spokesman for the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the chief regulatory agency for the pipeline industry, said Enbridge filed a report on the problem, as it’s required by regulation, that mentioned a valve issue.

Boston University Professor Nathan Phillips said that regional policy dictates that gas must go to heating needs before it gets to power generators, so if there were an unusual step-up in demand, there should have been problems with electric supply at the same time as the heating disruption. According to data from the New England power grid, electric generation from gas-fired power plants remained steady throughout the day on Monday.

“I'm not buying Enbridge's explanation until more facts are known,” said Phillips, who has led research on gas leaks and other pipeline problems. “We have had cold snaps as bad or worse over the last few years without such a system-level failure.”

Greg Cunningham, vice president of the Conservation Law Foundation, was also skeptical. Utilities like National Grid plan their system needs years in advance and tie up contracts for supply and space on pipelines to guarantee they can meet customer demand, he said. Those plans, which factor in days of extreme cold and periods of extended cold, must then be vetted by regulators, such as the Rhode Public Utilities Commission.

“Yes it’s been cold, but it hasn’t been that cold and it hasn’t been that cold for that long,” said Cunningham, an environmental lawyer. “This idea that a few cold days in January have triggered some issue with their gas supply just doesn’t make sense.”

In its statement that attributed the outage to higher demand, Enbridge acknowledged that a “temporary reduction in available natural gas supply exacerbated the conditions that led to this disruption in service,” but did not explain the cause of the reduction. The company has not responded to repeated attempts to clarify its statement.

It’s hard to say whether one malfunctioning valve could have caused the situation, until more is known about its type, size and location, said Don Deaver, owner of Deatech Consulting in Texas. Cold weather could be a factor in system problems if demand increases so much that more gas is being pushed through a pipeline and forces up pressures, he said.

“When you have high amounts of gas, the velocities can cause turbulence and chatter and mechanical problems in a valve,” he said.

Mark McDonald, president of NatGas Consulting in Massachusetts, questioned why other areas didn’t feel any impacts if there was a larger transmission supply problem. He said that National Grid must bear some responsibility for the situation.

Still, Bob Ackley, owner of Gas Safety Inc. in Massachusetts, said that it’s widely known in the industry that Aquidneck Island is a place with poor supply because it has only one link to the distribution network and because of its location at the very end of a branch line that runs off the main Algonquin trunk, which brings gas to New England from the Midwest and the South.

Providence and other parts of Rhode Island are not only supplied by lines with higher pressure, they also have multiple links to the system, which, said Ackley, could explain why no other areas suffered severe drops in pressure. National Grid cited the same reasons for why a similar event somewhere else is highly unlikely.

Ackley said that if a single valve is found to be the culprit, it shows a serious problem with the gas system.

“If you’re going to rely on this, you can’t put thousands of people at risk with no alternative,” he said.

akuffner@providencejournal.com

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.